Curious what thoughts came to me with deep convition—“Must not go back to the Willetts’” etc.
Went down again to the monastery in mid-afternoon.
They are on retreat and someone told me the retreat-master had started out by saying Buddhists were life-denying and Christians life-affirming! I couldn’t care less about such platitudes. What does he mean by life?
An experience like this sickness is purifying and renewing because it reminds you not to be too attached to the narrow view of what you think life is—the immediate task, the business of getting done what you think is important, of enjoying what you want right now, etc. Sickness pulls the rug from under all of it. Haven’t been able to do anything, think anything. Yet in the evening-the bare trees against the metallic blue of the evening were incredibly beautiful: as suspended in a kind of Buddhist emptiness. Does it occur to anyone that Sunyata is the very ground oflife?
January 21, 1968. III Sunday after Epiphany
Another grey day. Snow still fairly thick on the ground, and now black with coal dust around the monastery.
I did not concelebrate, but ate dinner at the monastery.
In the afternoon went out for the first decent walk in almost a week—out to the Pond by St. Bernard’s field with its green ice and its dead trees and silences.
When I was making supper someone came banging on the door. It was Brother Thomas from the monastery with a message that Sy Freedgood was dead. I went down to call his wife Anne, and found out that his house in Bridgehampton had burned down last night and he was not able to get out. Suffering with bursitis he had been taking a lot of pills and drinking too and was probably too groggy to escape—a very tragic thing-yet somehow last spring everything about him pointed to death—a kind of dysfunction. (His accident on the way here was sign enough!) I could not talk to Anne, who was on the way from Bridgehampton to New York, but spoke to one of her friends in the N.Y. apartment. Poor Sy! I wired Lax, who is now in Olean.
Before I heard the news I was playing some Mozart Quintets on the record player and enjoying them. I no longer feel like listening to anything, Mozart or anything else.
Sy’s grandiose plans in the spring—for getting me out “like Faulkner” once a year, etc. etc. We did have a pretty good day in Lexington!
It is already a hard year, and I don’t know what else is coming, but I have a feeling it is going to be hard all the way and for everybody.
January 23, 1968
Poor Sy! Mass for him yesterday (Library Chapel) and today (hermitage). I remember so many things: Sy and Rice at my baptism; the time we rented the house in Woodstock for the summer and then didn’t go—a good thing—(I sublet my apartment to him). Bramachari. Sy’s place in Long Beach, the brothers and uncles. That crazy paper we started.
Sy trying to teach me Judo on a sandbar in the lagoon behind Long Beach. I don’t remember ifhe was at Olean—maybe.
Last year he was here looking terrible in his fur hat and bandaged face and I knew he was finished. Yet he was full of ideas and plans. We made a voluble, profane tape. ’Ialked of his analysis. And his analyst on whom he greatly depended. And death, which he had very much on his mind. It must have been tough on Anne to cope with all his drive and all his despair. (In Bardstown—he wasted time and money sending an insulting telegram to some superior at Fortune, about some job he (Sy) was really not doing.)
A dark, wet night. Yesterday much of the snow melted and when I woke rain was falling. It may be drizzling still.
I have got most of the material together for the first issue of Monks Pond and am happy with it—especially the selections from Keith Wilson, AI Hamilton—most especially the selections from Shen Hui” which are extraordinary.
I am reading Reza Arasteh’s fine book Final Integration and I think it brings a whole lot of threads together and makes much sense—as opposed to so much of the fragmentary and short-sighted views of sociology and psychology in America. This really has something new to say—and yet it is in line with the wisdom of the millennia. And very germane to monasticism.
January 24, 1968
Brighter weather—quite cold. Bitter cold morning with blue clouds and sun trying to get through. Later it was fully bright. The last two days I have participated in dialog with a group together with Fr. Vincent Martin the retreat-master. Quite good. He is an unusual person—was a Benedictine in China, then a Lt. Col. in the Chinese Army in World War II, then imprisoned in the same camp with Fr. David [Murphy, of Gethsemani] and the Chinese Trappists. Then studied at Harvard under Gordon Allport. He is a monk of Vallyermo but after a year at Weston has been a couple of years at Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem. A very likeable and intelligent person with good ideas. He seems to be giving a good retreat. Anyway the dialog discussions were fruitful. This afternoon he went up to the hermitage with Fr. Eudes and Fr. Matthew and I got to know him better.
12 The Shen Hui article did appear in the first volume of Monks Pond, a small journal edited by Merton in 1968, four issues in all. “Selections from the Dialogues of the Zen Master Shen Hui (8th century A.D.),” with an introduction by Wei-wu-wei. The four issues of Monks Pond were reissued in a facsimile edition in one volume by the University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, in 1989.
January 26, 1968
Two nights ago—early morning, before dawn: the old moon—dying crescent—hung in the South with Antares (of Scorpius) almost caught in the crescent. And as if the moon were holding up Scorpius in a balancing act. A forbidding sign. Venus nearby.
Dom James has still not moved out to the woods—is still in fact in his office. Dom Flavian waits in the Guesthouse for him to move. Some of my mail still comes to me with a mark of Dom J. on it: for instance a telegram from Bob Giroux about Sy’s death.
Last evening Bro. Victor came up with a can of water—Fr. Hilarion with him—and told me an American spy ship had been captured by North Koreans. A weird story, with ominous repercussions. Johnson rattling the sabre, calling up reserves, etc. etc. It didn’t sound like something seriously believable—though I don’t doubt the ship is where it is: captured. It sounded like some sort of a contrived “incident,” too phony to amount to anything, so phony it’s just embarrassing…
But today again I heard Washington is making a big thing out of it, and on my way back from dinner I stopped to talk to Andy Boone who was picking up the ashcans from the furnace room. He said, “What do you think about the war?” I said, “Is war really declared?” He said, “It will be by two o’clock tonight.”
Well, one always takes Andy Boone with a grain of salt.
But Bro. Clement gave some details. The whole thing sounds incredibly fishy, absurdly so: a completely contrived “incident”—not even the simplest appear to be convinced of it. Even Andy Boone said, “What was that boat doing in there anyway?” And why no signals?
Maybe Johnson has finally got his big war, but he still hasn’t got the country with him. Never was anyone such an unconvincing fraud! On the other hand, if he is detennined to have a world war in Asia, there will be a pile of trouble here at home. I don’t relish the prospect! (Even Andy Boone is talking of “Civil War.”)
Got some letters written in the morning, though this is harder and harder to do. So much of the mail seems completely pointless. And in fact a great deal of it is simply a matter of someone trying to get your name for something, to line you up for some cause or other, or to engage you in a chain of pseudo-events and pseudo-decisions: or more simply to get some money out of you: or to use you in some way.
This afternoon—a quiet walk in the sun: again down by St. Bernard’s pond. Gannons’ dog tagged along—that pretty collie bitch with a feathery tail—running busily into everything, immense interest in all kinds of smells, mysteries, secrets in the hushes and in the grass. She ran on the melting ice, rolled in the manure spread over the pasture (rolled twice!), came out of the brush with her tail full of dead leaves and in a final paroxysm of energy chased a cat into the cowbarn. A completely
successful afternoon for her anyway!!
I had Buber’s Ten Rungs in my pocket and couldn’t read a line of it, only looked at the sun, the dead grass, the green soft ice, the blue sky, and felt utterly blank. Will there never be any peace on earth in our lifetime? Will they never do anything but kill, and then kill some more? Apparently they are caught in that impasse: the system is completely violent and involved in violence, and there is no way out but violence: and that leads only to more violence. Really—what is ahead but the apocalypse?
January 31, 1968
Clear, thin new moon appearing and disappearing between slow slate blue clouds—and the living black skeletons of the trees against the evening sky. More artillery than usual whumping at Knox. It is my fifty-third birthday.
We do not have a war—only “the Pueblo crisis,” with senators shouting like complete morons about “wiping those yellow bastards off the map” or words to that effect. Complete inanity.
But the guns at Knox nevertheless shake all my windows.
A warm, clear, quiet afternoon. I did not work but went for a walk down to the pond. All the water is clear of ice except in one shady comer. There were some wild ducks down at the end. They rose and circled and then headed south into a strong wind that broke up their formation. What are they doing going south now? Maybe the winter is far from over, though this was a springlike afternoon.
The other day I was in town. It embarrasses me. Of course, J had to see the proctologist and that is always embarrasing—with your head down and your asshole up in the air, trying to talk about Mexican Indians. I had more money than usual, so bought some records—and then felt guilty. But the new Dylan record Oohn Wesley Hardin) is his best. Very encouraging. He’d had a bad accident and everyone thought he was finished.
Also got Coltrane’s Ascension which is shattering. A fantastic and prophetic piece of music.
I keep getting more and more good stuff for Monks Pond. Today some fragments of Paul Klee translated by Anselm Hollo. Very welcome. I think it will be a good magazine.
In town I visited Tommie O’Callaghan, recovering from an operation. She is at home now. Lovely photographs of the children taken by Gene Meatyard. First time I have been to Dan [Walsh]’s apartment in Lenahan Hall. George picked us up there to drive home.
Dennis Goulet [University ofIndiana, Bloomington] came Saturday and brought Richard Chi, who is a very interesting person. J wish I could find out more about the Zen Master he studied under. Hope to see more of him. He brought a lovely and mysterious painting of a 17th-century Zen monk, Tao Chi. Fascinating—very direct and arresting picture! A landscape with a gripping subliminal quality. Goulet said “like Van Gogh”-and yet it isn’t really. Not the Van Gogh swirl and flame form, a different kind of structure, more mysterious, more dreamlike, more detached than Van Gogh.
February 4, 1968. Fifth Sunday after Ephiphany
In the east, blue and purple clouds laid on lightly as if with a dry brush—and clear blue sky above them. The field is heavy with frost. Gas is getting low in the tank—repeated promises on the part of Brother A. that he will refill it, but he doesn’t. I still have enough for a few days maybe, if I ration it.
Haven’t done much work in the last week or so-too many interruptions. For instance, Friday afternoon just as I was getting ready to type some of the Geography of Lograire, the Chaplain from Nazareth showed up with Fr. Malcolm Boyd and I was glad to meet him, yet felt I talked too much and too wildy—or anyway too irresponsibly, perhaps overcompensating for the fact that I’d rather not have been visited.
Yesterday, Carolyn Hammer, John Jacob Niles and Rena with Bob Shepherd and Hanna came over. This was a pleasant visit in the field and warm sun by the Pond, and I enjoyed it. Salad and wine! And good talk, and not too long. After they left I had time to clean up my place a hit and bum some of the paper and boxes and bags that have piled up since Christmas.
Nevertheless I have to face the fact that there are too many people coming around, and a lot of them are simply busting in uninvited and are a nuisance. And going to town is a bigger nuisance. True, I have to see the doctor, and there are still things to do, but more and more I have a sense of untruth and ambiguity in all my “social” existence, from my conferences in the monastery to visits with people from outside.
A few rare exceptions. Richard Chi for instance is probably one I can talk with on a level of real communication (Buddhism). I enjoy the Niles, Carolyn, etc. but with Carolyn there is a kind of estrangement—she is closing in on a kind of defensive conservatism all round. I guess she is lonely and afraid, if the truth be told. She distrusts my radicalism on some points, and feels I fail her somehow. Yet I myself see no real value in “radical action” for my own part. There is nothing really effective I can do and apart from saying what I think (as in the book Faith and Violence) there is nothing to contribute. Besides, things are so fluid and so uncertain that an opinion loses its significance in three weeks. I cannot get involved in the surface of activity that concerns itself only with immediate gestures and demonstrations, and perhaps the best thing for me to do is simply to shut up—until something really new happens.
At this point I am getting more and more letters from people wondering if with a new Abbot, I am “coming out” to join in all kinds of things, to speak here, to lecture there, to give retreats, to meet students, to join in marches. Not only is Dom Flavian just as opposed to all that as Dom James was, but the Order itself would not countenance it—and I myself feel that it would be futile and irrelevant for me—not what I am called to be doing.
February 6, 1968
“The Pueblo incident” has not turned into anything. Johnson obviously can’t afford a second war. And the whole thing simply shows up the folly of the U.S. trying to police the whole world with spying engineers of one kind or another—and with fuzz-armies.
Somehow the conflict seems much clearer: it is really racial, and the racism of the U.S., though anned with everything under the sun, is up a blind alley. It has no future—except perhaps a kind of fat, fascist desperation.
A sunny day, more like spring-after the usual cold night and freezing morning. I am not writing letters, though I have many that require answers. So much of the mail is utterly pointless. Except for some that come from kids, high school or college, really suffering from the stupidity and inhumanity of their elders. Some of these people must be real bastards!
I got some of the Geography of Lograire on paper—so much work needs to be done on it, but typing is a step. Then I can correct, revise, add. But this is not something you just sit down to every day.
Bob Giroux sent some [Cesare] Pavese. I may write on him, though it is foolish to branch out more. Yet I really do like him.
I need quiet. I need to get down to more reading and meditation. The problem of people is of my own making—as problem and as ambiguity.
February 8, 1968
Yesterday—Feast of St. Romuald incidentally—finally got a mimeo copy of Journal of My Escape from the Nazis. Naomi has written repeatedly about it. Work on the new liturgy books has held up everything else here. I forget when I sent the ms to Marie Charron to type—maybe September of last year. I wanted the stencils for November. Got them finally in December, and have been waiting ever since for them to be run off. Yesterday, when I looked at the first and only copy so far, I found to my dismay that some of the chapters (unnumbered in the original) were in the wrong place—the dog cemetery, for example, comes before I met B. And so B. is alluded to and she has not yet been introduced. And so on. Marie C. must have dropped the ms. and got it back together wrong. Yet I thought I carefully numbered the pages in pencil. Maybe not. I send the text today.
Whatever the mess—this is a book I am pleased with—this Journal of Escape. I have always thought of it as one of my best. Not that it holds together perfectly as a book, but there is good writing and it comes from the center where I have really experienced myself and my life. It represents a very vital and crucial—and fruitfu
l—moment of my existence. Perhaps now I am returning to some such moment of breakthrough. I hope I am. I won’t have many more chances! Geography of Lograire may in parts have some of the same sardonic vitality, but with much more involvement and complexity.
World Revolution. Strangely enough, the obsessive efforts of the U.S. to contain by violence all revolutionary activity anywhere in the world only precipitate revolution. And guarantee that it has to be violent.
1. Soviet policy of “peaceful coexistence” has finally been made to appear ludicrous by VN war. North VN forced into the fight, forced to drop the cautious Soviet line and go over to the uncompromising line of MAD.
2. Non-violence in Civil Rights—has been completely discredited by white racist violence which is entirely insensitive to meaning of non-violence. Which is dominated by its own obsessions and myths, and creates violence. Self-fulfilling prophecy.
3. The draft is necessary not to defend the country but to maintain an army big enough to police the world and put down revolution the way the Alabama State Troopers put down Negro demonstrations: of course the help of national armies is also required.
4. This policy justifies the Chinese one of starting guerrilla war everywhere possible so as to involve and scatter U.S. forces.
5. This in turn encourages the desperation of resisters and race revolutionists at home.
The Other Side of the Mountain Page 7
